My Publication

Tuesday, 15 October 2013

How not to write a PhD thesis

By Time Higher Education

In this guide, Tara Brabazon gives her top ten tips for doctoral failure

My
teaching break between Christmas and the university’s snowy reopening
in January followed in the footsteps of Goldilocks and the three bears. I
examined three PhDs: one was too big; one was too small; one was just
right. Put another way, one was as close to a fail as I have ever
examined; one passed but required rewriting to strengthen the argument;
and the last reminded me why it is such a pleasure to be an academic.

Concurrently,
I have been shepherding three of my PhD students through the final two
monthsto submission. These concluding weeks are an emotional cocktail
of exhaustion, frustration, fright and exhilaration. Supervisors correct
errors we thought had been removed a year ago. The paragraph that
seemed good enough in the first draft now seems to drag down a chapter.
My postgraduates cannot understand why I am so picky. They want to
submit and move on with the rest of their lives.

There is a reason
why supervisors are pedantic. If we are not, the postgraduates will
live with the consequences of “major corrections” for months. The other
alternative, besides being awarded the consolation prize of an MPhil, is
managing the regret of three wasted years if a doctorate fails. Every
correction, each typographical error, all inaccuracies, ambiguities or
erroneous references that we find and remove in these crucial final
weeks may swing an examiner from major to minor corrections, or from a
full re-examination to a rethink of one chapter.

Being a PhD
supervisor is stressful. It is a privilege but it is frightening. We
know – and individual postgraduates do not – that strange comments are
offered in response to even the best theses. Yes, an examiner graded a
magnificent doctorate from one of my postgraduates as “minor
corrections” for one typographical error in footnote 104 in the fifth
chapter of an otherwise cleanly drafted 100,000 words. It was submitted
ten years ago and I still remember it with regret.

Another
examiner enjoyed a thesis on “cult” but wondered why there were no
references to Madonna, grading it as requiring major corrections so that
Madonna references could be inserted throughout the script.

Examiners
have entered turf wars about the disciplinary parameters separating
history and cultural studies. Often they look for their favouritetheorists – generally Pierre Bourdieu or Gilles Deleuze these days – and
are saddened to find citations to Michel Foucault and Félix Guattari.

Then
there are the “let’s talk about something important – let’s talk about
me” examiners. Their first task is to look for themselves in the
bibliography, and they are not too interested in the research if there
is no reference to their early sorties with Louis Althusser in Economy
and Society from the 1970s.

I understand the angst, worry and
stress of supervisors, but I have experienced the other side of the
doctoral divide. Examining PhDs is both a pleasure and a curse. It is a
joy to nurture, support and help the academy’s next generation, but it
is a dreadful moment when an examiner realises that a script is so below
international standards of scholarship that there are three options:
straight fail, award an MPhil or hope that the student shows enough
spark in the viva voce so that it may be possible to skid through to
major corrections and a full re-examination in 18 months.

When
confrontedby these choices, I am filled with sadness for students and
supervisors, but this is matched by anger and even embarrassment. What
were the supervisors thinking? Who or what convinced the student that
this script was acceptable?

Therefore, to offer insights to
postgraduates who may be in the final stages of submission, cursing
their supervisors who want another draft and further references, here
are my ten tips for failing a PhD. If you want failure, this is yourroad map to getting there.

1. Submit an incomplete, poorly formatted bibliography

Doctoral
students need to be told that most examiners start marking from the
back of the script. Just as cooks are judged by their ingredients and
implements, we judge doctoral students by the calibre of their sources.

The
moment examiners see incomplete references or find that key theorists
in the topic are absent, they worry. This concern intensifies when
in-text citations with no match in the bibliography are located.

If
examiners find ten errors, then students are required to perform minor
corrections. If there are 20 anomalies, the doctorate will need major
corrections. Any referencing issues over that number and examiners
question the students’ academic abilities.

If the most basic
academic protocols are not in place, the credibility of a script wavers.
A bibliography is not just a bibliography: it is a canary in the
doctoral mine.

2. Use phrases such as “some academics” or “all the literature” without mitigating statements or references

Generalisationsinfuriate me in first-year papers, but they are understandable. A
19-year-old student who states that “all women think that Katie Price is
a great role model” is making a ridiculous point, but when the primary
reading fodder is Heat magazine, the link between Jordan’s plastic
surgery and empowered women seems causal. In a PhD, generalisations send
me off for a long walk to Beachy Head.

The best doctorates are
small. They are tightly constituted and justify students’ choice of one
community of scholars over others while demonstrating that they have
read enough to make the decision on academic rather than time-management
grounds.

Invariably there is a link between a thin bibliography
and a high number of generalisations. If a student has not read widely,
then the scholars they have referenced become far more important and
representative than they actually are.

I make my postgraduates pay
for such statements. If they offer a generalisation such as “scholars
of the online environment argue that democracy follows participation”, I
demand that they find at least 30 separate references to verify their
claim. They soon stop making generalisations.

Among my doctoral
students, these demands have been nicknamed “Kent footnotes” after one
of my great (post-) postgraduates, Mike Kent (now Dr Kent). He relished
compiling these enormous footnotes, confirming the evidential base for
his arguments. As he would be the first to admit, it was slightlyobsessivebehaviour, but it certainly confirmed the scale of his
reading. In my current supervisory processes, students are punished for
generalisations by being forced to assemble a “Kent footnote”.

3. Write an abstract without a sentence starting “my original contribution to knowledge is…”

The
way to relax an examiner is to feature a sentence in the first
paragraph of a PhD abstract that begins: “My original contribution to
knowledge is…” If students cannot compress their argument and research
findings into a single statement, then it can signify flabbiness in
their method, theory or structure. It is an awful moment for examiners
when they – desperately – try to find an original contribution to
knowledge through a shapeless methods chapter or loose literature
review. If examiners cannot pinpoint the original contribution, they
have no choice but to award the script an MPhil.

The key is to
make it easy for examiners. In the second sentence of the abstract,
ensure that an original contribution is nailed to the page. Then we can
relax and look for the scaffolding and verification of this statement.

I
once supervised a student investigating a very small area of “queer”
theory. It is a specialist field, well worked over by outstanding
researchers. I remained concerned throughout the candidature that there
was too much restatement of other academics’ work. The scholarship is of
high quality and does not leave much space for new interpretations.

Finally,
we located a clear section in one chapter that was original. He
signalled it in the abstract. He highlighted it in the introduction. He
stressed the importance of this insight in the chapter itself and
restated it in the conclusion. Needless to say, every examiner noted the
original contribution to knowledge that had been highlighted for them,
based on a careful and methodical understanding of the field. He passed
without corrections.

4. Fill the bibliography with references to blogs, online journalism and textbooks

This
is a new problem I have seen in doctorates over the past six months.
Throughout the noughties, online sources were used in PhDs. However, the
first cycle of PhD candidates who have studied in the web 2.0
environmentare submitting their doctorates this year. The impact on the
theses I have examined recently is clear to see. Students do not
differentiate between refereed and non-refereed or primary and secondary
sources. The Google Effect – the creation of a culture of equivalence
between blogs and academic articles – is in full force. When questioned
in an oral examination, the candidates do not display that they have the
capacity to differentiate between the calibre and quality of
references.

This bibliographical flattening and reduction in
quality sources unexpectedly affects candidates’ writing styles. I am
not drawing a causal link here: major research would need to be
undertaken to probe this relationship. But because the students are not
reading difficult scholarship, they are unaware of the specificities of
academic writing. The doctorates are pitched too low, filled with
informalities, conversational language, generalisations, opinion and
unreflexive leaps between their personal “journeys” (yes, it is like an
episode of The X Factor) and research protocols.

I asked one of
these postgraduates in their oral examination to offer a defence of
their informal writing style, hoping that the student would pull out a
passable justification through the “Aca-Fan”, disintermediation,
participatory culture or organic intellectual arguments. Instead, the
student replied: “I am proud of how the thesis is written. It is
important to write how we speak.”

Actually, no. A PhD must be
written to ensure that it can be examined within the regulations of a
specific university and in keeping with international standards ofdoctoral education. A doctorate may be described in many ways, but it
has no connection with everyday modes of communication.

How to upset an examiner in under
60 seconds: throw basic semiotic phrases into a sentence as if they are
punctuation. Often this problem emerges in theses where “semiotics” is
cited as a/the method. When a student uses words such as “discourse” and
“ideology” as if they were neutral nouns, it is often a signal for the
start of a pantomime of naivety throughout the script. Instead of an
“analysis”, postgraduates describe their work as “deconstruction”. It is
not deconstruction. They describe their approach as “structuralist”. It
is not structuralist. Simply because they study structures does not
mean it is structuralist. Conversely, simply because they do not study
structuresdoes not mean it is poststructuralist.

The number of
students who fling names around as if they are fashion labels (“Dior”,
“Derrida”, “Givenchy”, “Gramsci”) is becoming a problem. I also feel
sorry for the students who are attempting a deep engagement with these
theorists.

I am working with a postgraduate at the moment who has
spent three months mapping Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge
over media-policy theories of self-regulation. It has been frustrating
andtough, creating – at this stage – only six pages of work from her
efforts. Every week, I see the perspiration on the page and the strain
in the footnotes. If a student is not prepared to undertake this scale
of effort, they must edit the thesis and remove all these words. They
leave themselves vulnerable to an examiner who knows their ideological
state apparatuses from their repressive state apparatuses.

6.
Assume something you are doing is new because you have not read enough
to know that an academic wrote a book on it 20 years ago

Again,
this is another new problem I have seen in the past couple of years.
Lazy students, who may be more kindly described as “inexperienced
researchers”, state that they have invented the wheel because they have
not looked under their car to see the rolling objects under it. After
minimal reading, it is easy to find original contributions to knowledge
in every idea that emerges from the jarring effect of a bitter espresso.

More
frequently, my problem as a supervisor has been the incrediblyhardworking students who read so much that they cannot control all the
scholarly balls they have thrown into the air. I supervise an
inspirational scholar who is trying to map Zygmunt Bauman’s “liquid”
research over neoconservative theory. This is difficult research,
particularly since she is also trying to punctuate this study with Stan
Aronowitz’s investigations of post-work and Henry Giroux’s research into
working-class education. For such students, supervisors have to prune
the students’ arguments to ensure that all the branches are necessary
and rooted in their original contributions to knowledge.

The
over-readers present their own challenges. For our under-readers, the
world is filled with their own brilliance because they do not realisethat every single sentence they write has been explored, extended,
tested and applied by other scholars in the past. Intriguingly, these
are always the confident students, arriving at the viva voce brimming
with pride in their achievements. They are the hardest ones to assess
(and help) through an oral exam because they do not know enough to know
how little they know.

Helpful handball questions about the most
significant theorists in their research area are pointless, because they
have invented all the material in this field. The only way to create an
often-debilitating moment of self-awareness is by directly questioning
the script: “On p57, you state that the academic literature has not
addressed this argument. Yet in 1974, Philippa Philistine published a
book and a series of articles on that topic. Why did you decide not to
cite that material?”

Invariably, the answer to this question –
often after much stuttering and stammering – is that the candidate had
not read the analysis. I leave the question hanging at that point. We
could get into why they have not read it, or the consequences of leaving
out key theorists. But one moment of glimpsing into the abyss of
failure is enough to summon doubt that their “originality” is original.

7. Leave spelling mistakes in the script

Spelling
errors among my own PhD students leave me seething. I correct spelling
errors. They appear in the next draft. I correct spelling errors. They
appear in the next draft. The night before they bind their theses, I
stare at the ceiling, summoning the doctoral gods and praying that they
have removed the spelling errors.

Most examiners will accept a few
spelling or typographical mistakes, but in a word-processing age, this
tolerance is receding. I know plenty of examiners who gain greatpleasure in constructing a table and listing all the typographical and
spelling errors in a script. Occasionally I do it and then I know I need
to get out more.

Spelling mistakes horrify students. They render
supervisors in need of oxygen. Postgraduates may not fail doctorates
because of them, but such errors end any chance of passing quickly and
without corrections. These simple mistakes also create doubt in the
examiner’s mind. If superficial errors exist, it may be necessary to
drill more deeply into the interpretation, methods or structure chosen
to present the findings.

8. Make the topic of the thesis too large

The
best PhDs are small. They investigate a circumscribed area, rather than
over-egging the originality or expertise. The most satisfying theses –
and they are rare – emerge when students find small gaps in saturated
research areas and offer innovative interpretations or new applications
of old ideas.

The nightmare PhD for examiners is the candidate who
tries to compress a life’s work into 100,000 words. They take on the
history of Marxism, or more commonly these days, feminism. They attempt
todistil 100 years of history, theory, dissent and debate into a
literature review and end up applying these complex ideas to Beyoncé’s
video for Single Ladies.

The best theses not only state theiroriginal contribution to knowledge but also confirm in the introduction
what they do not address. I know that many supervisors disagree with me
on this point. Nevertheless, the best way to protect candidates and
ensure that examiners understand the boundaries and limits of the
research is to state what is not being discussed. Students may be asked
why they made those determinations, and there must be scholarly and
strategic answers to such questions.

The easiest way to trim and
hem the ragged edges of a doctorate is historically or geographically.
The student can base the work on Belgium, Brazil or the Bahamas, or a
particular decade, governmental term or after a significant event such
as 11 September 2001. Another way to contain a project is theoretically,
to state there is a focus on Henry Giroux’s model of popular culture
and education rather than Henry Jenkins’ configurations of new media and
literacy. Such a decision can be justified through the availability of
sources, or the desire to monitor one scholar’s pathway through analogue
and digital media. Examiners will feel more comfortable if they know
that students have made considered choices about their area of research
and understand the limits of their findings.

9. Write a short, rushed, basic exegesis

An
unfair – but occasionally accurate – cliché of practice-led doctorates
is that students take three and a half years to make a film,
installation or soundscape and spend three and a half weeks writing the
exegesis. Doctoral candidates seem unaware that examiners often read
exegeses first and engage with the artefacts after assessing if
candidates have read enough in the field.

Indeed, one of mystudents recommended an order of reading and watching for her examiners,
moving between four chapters and films. The examiner responded in her
report – bristling – that she would not be told how to evaluate a
thesis: she always read the full exegesis and then decided whether or
not to bother seeing the films. My student – thankfully – passed with
ease, but this examiner told a truth that few acknowledge.

Most
postgraduates I talk with assume that the examiners rush with enthusiasm
to the packaged DVD or CD, or that they will not read a word of the
doctorate until they have seen the exhibition. This is the same
assumption that inhibits these students in viva voces. They think that
they will be able to talk about “art” and “process” for two hours. I
have never seen that happen. Instead, the emphasis is placed on the
exegesis and how it articulates the artefact.

Postgraduates
entering a doctoral programme to make a film or create a sonic
installation subject themselves to a time-consuming and difficult
process. If the student neglects the exegesis until the end of the
candidature and constructs a rushed document about “how” rather than
“why” it was made, there will be problems.

The best students find a
way to create “bonsai” exegeses. They prepare perfectly formed
engagements with theory, method and scholarship, but in miniature. They
note word limits, demonstrate the precise dialogue between the exegesis
andartefact, and show through a carefully edited script that they hold
knowledge equivalent to the “traditional” doctoral level.

10. Submit a PhD with a short introduction or conclusion

A
quick way to move from a good doctoral thesis to one requiring major
corrections is to write a short introduction and/or conclusion. It is
frustrating for examiners. We are poised to tick the minor corrections
box, and then we turn to a one- or two-page conclusion.

After
reading thousands of words, students must be able to present effective,
convincing conclusions, restating the original contribution to
knowledge, the significance of the research, the problems and flaws and
further areas of scholarship. Short conclusions are created by tireddoctoral students. They run out of words.

Short introductions
signify the start of deeper problems: candidates are unaware of the
research area or the theoretical framework. In the case of introductions
andconclusions in doctoral theses, size does matter.

Hope washesover the start of a PhD candidature, but desperation and fear oftenmark its conclusion. There are (at least) ten simple indicators that
prompt examiners to recommend re-examination, major corrections or –
with some dismay – failure. If postgraduates utilise these guidelines,
they will be able to make choices and realise the consequences of their
decisions.

The lessons of scholarship begin with intellectual
generosity to the scholars who precede us. Ironically – although perhaps
not – candidatures also conclude there.